Let 'em sell tobacco; just don't buy it

If you're a certain age, you remember when the corner pharmacy was where you went to get a prescription filled. The most unhealthy thing there was the soda fountain, where you could get a sundae or a milkshake that compared to servings these days, would have left room in a thimble.

Now, the corner pharmacy is a big box store that rivals a supermarket. But it wants to be known as a health store. So it's thinking of not selling some things that are bad for us. But not all things that contribute to making us sick. Apparently, all illness is not prevented equally.

In the wake of CVS saying it will stop selling tobacco over the next few months, some people have started a change.org petition to get Walgreens to do the same.

This may be heresy from a health educator, but why?

Tobacco is a legal drug and this is America. So unless we want to revisit prohibition, let the stores sell what they want and let the marketplace decide. If you don't like what a store offers, don't shop there.

Besides, why go after tobacco when the "pharmacy" still stocks huge bottles of soda to wash down the junk food that fills several aisles and greets you at checkout. Inasmuch as secondhand calories (when your friend eats a candy bar and you get a hankerin') haven't been recognized as a health hazard, we'll limit this argument to tobacco. But the principle is the same when trying to change any unhealthy behavior.

Here's where I earn back my health ed credentials: Make tobacco use uncomfortable. Where there are laws against littering and a pedestrian crossing a busy intersection drops a cigarette butt in front of a police officer directing traffic, that constable should write a ticket.

If businesses don't want people to smoke on or near their premises, have security make frequent rounds and shoo people farther out into the elements. If a community wants to ban smoking in parks and playgrounds, its citizens must be willing to enforce that ban, either by speaking up when someone lights up or paying for police to be on the lookout for scofflaws.

Build barriers to smoking that aren't worth climbing over. Promote benefits of not smoking that are worth the effort to achieve. Create a climate where people do what you want them to do -- only they thought doing it was their idea.